A Place For Thoughts

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

I was a very carefree young girl but my whole world went to shit at 8 years old!
I was an early bloomer and started, slowly getting boobs and it wasn’t until I was in year 5 that having somewhat of a cleavage started to change the way I saw myself. In my class, hardly any of the girls had boobs like me, and before I joined the class the girls would calmly dress in front of the boys, but as soon as I came in and joined we started changing in the classroom walk-in cupboard. I honestly didn’t realise that it was because of me that all the girls had to start changing else where until another girl pointed it out, she also took the time to point out that compared to all the other girls I had bigger boobs than everyone and I also had one of the biggest bums.

The shock and horror I experienced when I looked around and realised how correct she was, it was literally one of those moments when I really, really opened my eyes and could see properly see what was going on. I felt like a freak and I hated it! Why did I, out of all the girls have to have a big bum and boobs? Why couldn’t I be normal like everyone else! I longed to be skinny like my friends, I also longed to have smaller lips and a smaller pointer nose, I hated my hair and once I discovered what the Beyoncé’s and the Rihanna’s of the world really did with their hair…. oh my did I not want to jump on that bandwagon and get a weave.

When I got to high school the game had changed and it was as if over night, or over summer should I say, people started liking girls with big bums and boobs, especially bums in my high school. The boys would run towards you and slap your bum and then run away again, the girls would pretend to be mad and say “don’t touch my bum!” but secretly a little bit excited with the attention. As for Alice, well Alice was confused as fuck! One minute bums are disgusting and the next, bums are amazing and if you didn’t have a “back off” then you weren’t “buff”.
There was no winning here, in primary school I felt like a freak and ugly for having curves and no one considered me as pretty and then high school, my curves are not curvy enough and I’m still not considered pretty!
I don’t want to say that boys and their opinions of me mattered a lot because it didn’t and I was never interested in any of them at the time but there are some moments in my high school years when I could clearly see around me that everyone at one point had, had a boyfriend but me. All my friends always had boys after them and I was the third wheel 99% of the time (the 1% of the time I was at home). When I had those moments I really did start to wonder what the hell is wrong with me…..

High school and probably the first year of college was my lost years, I was not comfortable in my own skin and I would try so hard to be what society expected me to be. Everyone screamed “long hear, don’t care” so I would fight my mum to get me weave down to my butt, everyone showed off their twerking skills in the P.E changing rooms, so at night I would go and practice my skills in front of a mirror for the next P.E session. Miracle Watts and Nicki Minaj bodies were “goals” so I went and got a waist trainer and started exercising in my room. I did the most, I achieved some of the “trends” that was in at the time but there was always another, then another and to actually keep up with all the new crazy things society said was acceptable became very tiring and it was never as fulfilling as I thought it would be.
One day I stopped and I realised that one, I was not the type of girl who could actually keep up with all these trends and the demands of the world and two, I didn’t need to. All of the shit I was doing was pointless and it was not changing my life nor filling me up inside so I needed to stop and start doing things that made a positive difference within myself.

I thought I was over being insecure, I’m not in the same immature setting I used to be in and I’m 18 now, technically an “adult” (whatever that means). I was so shocked to realise that I had been feeling very insecure lately and then as I was writing this post I quickly realised that once you’re over the stage of pleasing others and complying to social standards you’ve got to actually now start to find yourself and that itself is a mission that can’t be completed in a day, a month or a year.

I realised that I’m now facing different types of pressure, “adult pressure” and it’s not about finding a boyfriend but now finding a husband (whatever one of those are) my mum is always lecturing me about learning household domestics so that I can be a good wife. I now have pressure to know exactly what I want to do career wise and there is apparently no time to change my mind or even mess up, I am supposed to be grown and know who I am but the truth is I only know bits and pieces…

In a few years time, there will be a follow-up post on this and I can write about how to fully overcome insecurities and pressure but for now all I can say to any young reader is that the pressure to please other people will go and you will start to do things for yourself and you WILL accept yourself for what you are and who you are so just hold tight.